I remember a panicky man unwrapping a bloodied hand for a woman behind an A&E window. He was missing a couple of fingers, so the ones he held up looked like the barrel of a gun. For a second, I thought we were in a post office and he’d come for the takings. I wouldn’t have let that happen, though it wasn’t happening - I had that preternatural calm that comes with the right combination of exhaustion and fascination. It can slow time.

The best writing can bring on that feeling. Michael Donaghy rarely doesn’t. Meaning is wild - you have to earn its trust. Treat your sentences like 15 unbroken horses on one set of reins.

.

Quorum 

In today's Guardian, the word quorum

is spelled the same as oqürum,

the only surviving word of Khazar,

according to the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia.

Oqürum, meaning 'I have read'.

.

The original pronunciation is lost for ever,

but I weigh three syllables in my palm

against 'paprika' and 'samovar',

'cedarwood' and, for some reason,

'mistletoe'. I have read...

.

an entire literature,

and enacted all that it describes.

On a winter morning, in an ochre room

that we can never enter, the resonance

of those imaginary consonants

.

the elders whisper over ancient documents

flickers the blood bright shadow

from a glass of tea.

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Michael Donaghy